Second Sunday in Advent
Commemoration of John of
Damascus, Theologian and Hymnwriter
December 4, 2011
It’s remarkable, then, that Mark tells us here about this beginning of
Jesus. Jesus, though God, is not afraid to have a beginning. This doesn’t mean
He was created. He is the Creator, He’s God. But He entered into His creation.
He had a beginning. We normally talk about that in terms of His birth. But Mark
here is making a theological point. The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, the Son of God, begins here with John the Baptist paving the way;
preparing; calling out; calling people to repentance. When Jesus comes on the
scene it’s to begin ministry. For thirty odd years He had been faithfully
serving in the vocation of son and carpenter. Faithfully carrying out His
vocation as a member of society.
Now was the beginning. The beginning of the Gospel. Mark tells us John
comes on the scene. John tells us of the one who will come on the scene next
and He’s the one who will carry out His ministry. Mark doesn’t spend time with
the thirty years that preceded this. He doesn’t tell us of the birth. He
doesn’t tell us of the teenage years. He doesn’t tell us of the early adult
years. He goes right to the ministry of Jesus. The beginning of the Gospel of
Jesus Christ, the Son of God.
Why is this? It’s because of the way God looks at things. Peter tells
us in the Epistle reading that “the Lord is not slow to fulfill His promise as
some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should
perish, but that all should reach repentance.” So here you have it. Thousands
of years had gone by before this day; before this day when John would come on
the scene, carrying out the prophetic fulfillment of being the Forerunner,
paving the way for Christ. Calling people to repentance. Preaching a Baptism of
repentance. If the people of God had been waiting for thousands of years
wondering if God was ever going to make good on His word, God Himself never
gave a moment’s thought to slowness. For Him there is no time. But He makes
good on His word in time. John the Baptist comes on the scene. Jesus comes on
the scene. The Gospel is begun. Jesus enters His ministry.
You and I need to start thinking this way. Not thinking about God’s
promises and blessings in terms of time while taking them in and enjoying them
in time. God is spiritual and outside of time but saves us in time. God is
spiritual and not bound by physical things and yet gives us His eternal
blessings in physical means. John came baptizing. He came applying water to
people and speaking words to them so that they would be forgiven their sins.
Most importantly, but really simply what flowed out of the Baptism he
carried out, was telling them of the one to come. The one after him who was
mightier than he, as he said, “the strap of whose sandals I am not worthy to stoop
down and untie. I have baptized you with water, but He will Baptize you with
the Holy Spirit.” This is why John had come. To baptize, yes. To preach, yes.
To pave the way, yes. All of these tasks were wrapped up in the one thing he
was doing: making known the one to come. The one who was mightier than he. The
one who would Baptize with the Holy Spirit.
John was taking his cue from Isaiah, where it was prophesied that he
would be doing this work. In our Old Testament reading we heard it: “And the
glory of the Lord shall be revealed.” Baptism is not a private thing. Salvation
is not merely between you and God. The Gospel is not meant as something you
keep to yourself. The Gospel Isaiah was prophesying, that Mark was telling
about, and that John was proclaiming, was a public Gospel. It was a Gospel to
be revealed. And that’s where Jesus belongs in all of this. He is in the flesh in
which that glory that is revealed that Isaiah spoke of. He is the eternal Son
of the Father who comes to Baptize in the Holy Spirit.
That day Mark was telling about wasn’t your ordinary day. People coming
out into the desert to hear an itinerant preacher. People hearing of a message
of repentance and confessing their sins. People stepping into the Jordan to be
baptized. It certainly wasn’t ordinary when Jesus Himself showed up, the one
John had been telling them about, the one who would Baptize them with the Holy
Spirit.
How many of those people walked home that day never again to see the
need for being in God’s House to hear that same message again, that Jesus is
the one in whom is their salvation? How many of those people left that day
having seen nothing more than an out of the ordinary event, but one that didn’t
have relevance for the rest of their lives? How many people are there today who
have been Baptized but never again see the need to hear the Gospel and regularly
receive the Lord’s Supper? How many among us are here regularly but come here
but don’t see anything out of the ordinary, as compared to something like what occurred
out there in the Judean wilderness with a man clothed in camel’s hair and
eating locusts and wild honey and baptizing people in a river and saying the
Messiah would be there in their presence?
Too often being here is just that. We’re here because that’s what we do
on Sunday mornings. Even when we understand the significance of it it can seem
like we’re going through the motions. Too often we don’t see and take to heart
that what occurred on that day in the Judean wilderness was what occurs every
time we gather here in God’s House around the liturgy, the Baptismal font, the
pulpit, the altar, and our brother and sister Christians. These things are not
private and personal matters. The Gospel is not individualistic. These things
are public. The Gospel is something that is revealed. It is made known. We are
here because we need to be here. We get something here that we can’t get on our
own.
What that is is what Isaiah, and then Mark, and then John the Baptist
were pointing to. Christ. Jesus, the Son of God, the one who Baptizes with the
Holy Spirit. What we get is God Himself in the flesh. We don’t see Him. We
don’t see Him as the people on that day did. But He comes to us as He did on
that day. John said Jesus would Baptize in the Holy Spirit. Why do we begin the
worship service the way we do, with the Invocation? Because we are the Baptized
children of God. We begin in the Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy
Spirit. Mark said that what he was doing was the beginning of the Gospel of
Jesus Christ, the Son of God; what we do when we gather in God’s House, is
begin in the same way. Our beginning in the Gospel was in Baptism. That’s how
we begin here.
What do the Baptized people of God do? They confess their sins. They
repent, just as John was preaching. We confess our sins because we are always
falling into sin. We are always wandering around in the desert of our lives not
seeing Jesus there. We’re wandering around because we’re seeking fullness of
life apart from things like confession and repentance. We make light of our sin
rather than recoiling in horror at it. We don’t see the great need to be here
rather than understanding that being here is the very sustenance of our life as
children of God.
John the Baptist was in that awkward time where he was in the New
Testament era but was an Old Testament prophet. He was the last in a long line
of prophets who foretold the coming of Christ. But actually it wasn’t awkward
at all. It actually was pretty much the same as what had been happening. And it
was the same as what happens now. Preachers today don’t preach anything
different. What Isaiah was doing, what Mark was speaking of, what John was
proclaiming, is what Christian preachers of today do. They proclaim Christ and
Him crucified. The fact that there are so many preachers that preach a message
devoid of repentance and the need to confess our sins shows how it’s not just
the average Christian that doesn’t see the need to be here. It shows that
preachers themselves are not immune to the temptation of wanting to hear a
message that skips the uncomfortable and deals mostly with the things we like
to hear.
What exactly does it mean to be Baptized with the Holy Spirit? That’s
what John said that Jesus would do, He would Baptize us with the Holy Spirit.
Jesus is God and the Holy Spirit is God. God the Son is Baptizing us with God
the Holy Spirit. What we need, my friends, is God. What we need is to be
forgiven of our sin. That’s why God the Father sends God the Son and God the
Son Baptizes us with the Holy Spirit, so that we can receive God. So that we
can be forgiven of our sins.
It’s true that hearing this message over and over can make it seem like
it’s not exciting or like we’re going through the motions in hearing it. But
it’s what we need. It’s what God has given us. He doesn’t give us something new
all the time. It’s what He’s given us for all of time and for eternity.
Salvation is in the forgiveness of sins. Eternal life with God is through being
forgiven. We need Baptism. We need Jesus. We need the forgiveness that God the
Father gives us in His Son through the Holy Spirit. Baptism is a one-time event
in our lives but we live it out daily. We daily die and rise in repentance and
newness of life.
In the Epistle reading Peter has this take on it: “Since all these
things are thus to be dissolved, what sort of people ought you to be in lives
of holiness and godliness, waiting for and hastening the coming of the day of
God, because of which the heavens will be set on fire and dissolved, and the
heavenly bodies will melt as they burn! But according to His promise we are
waiting for new heavens and a new earth in which righteousness dwells. Therefore,
beloved, since you are waiting for these, be diligent to be found by Him
without spot or blemish, and at peace.” This is a description of living as a
Baptized child of God. We know this because Peter talks of living in
repentance. The Baptized child of God lives a life of repentance.
The Baptized child of God lives a life of repentance not simply because
it’s commanded. And not because he’s supposed to be feeling bad all the time.
And not because he’s not supposed to enjoy life on this earth. The Baptized
child of God lives a life of repentance because he sees his need. He sees that
he needs Jesus. As Baptized children of God we see that what God offers us is
so much more than we could ever attain, or even seek, on our own, or any other
source. I mean, the Holy Spirit! What more could you want or need? When you see
that what Peter is talking about, that the Judgment Day could be any day, that
Christ is soon to come again in glory, that all we see here will be done away
with, you see that you have far greater needs than what we and so many often
seek. Living in repentance is not morbid and it doesn’t mean we have to live
somberly. But it does mean we take seriously the Word of God. That we are
without that Holy Spirit on our own. That we are unholy on our own. That we
need God to forgive us and make us holy. That we need salvation from our
continual disobedience of the Ten Commandments.
When we see this then we can see what the people in that desert
wasteland saw on that day. A man who came along in fulfillment of the preaching
of John the Baptist. A man who came to Baptize with the Holy Spirit. A man who
came in the flesh, not as a Lord and Master who dispenses with us as He
pleases. Yes, He was and always will be the Lord and Master. John, and we, are
unworthy to stoop down to untie His sandals. But He nevertheless came to the
Jordan on that day to show us who He is and exactly what kind of Lord and
Master He is. The one who has stooped down to untie the bonds of our sin. The
one who walked those dusty roads to the Jordan in fulfillment of Isaiah’s
prophecy and John’s proclamation only to find Himself making His way on the
dusty path to the hill of Calvary and the cross that stood there. The cross the
Romans had planted there wasn’t meant specifically for Him, but He had known
all along that He would be nailed to it.
A life of repentance is looking to this. It’s being sorry for your
sins, yes. But even more and especially it is looking to the cross. That also
is not a morbid thing. There’s solemnity in it, yes. But there is also the
highest joy, God in the flesh suffering at the hand of God, the recipient of
His wrath, all because of His eternal love for us. A life of repentance finds
the comfort the Old Testament reading spoke of in the suffering and the cross
of Christ. The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ culminated in that.
Being Baptized with the Holy Spirit is being Baptized into the death and
resurrection of Christ. For you, that is the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus
Christ, where you first received the Gospel and all that it entails—forgiveness
of sins, eternal life, being a child of God forever, now and without end in
heaven. Amen.
SDG
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